Charles Toutant

September 15, 2009 | New Jersey Law Journal

State troopers with law degrees have appealed a federal judge's ruling that a government ethics code bars them from practicing law.

By Charles Toutant

4 minute read

June 10, 2010 | New Jersey Law Journal

Two New Jersey men charged with conspiring to kill American troops in Somalia were denied bail Thursday as a federal judge accepted prosecutors' arguments that no conditions could reasonably assure that the defendants would show up for their legal proceedings.

By Charles Toutant

3 minute read

September 27, 2011 | New Jersey Law Journal

New Jersey's buckshot answer to a suit claiming drugs were involuntarily given to state psychiatric hospital patients was an exercise in bad pleading, one that will cost the state legal fees and costs.

By Charles Toutant

4 minute read

December 12, 2006 | New Jersey Law Journal

Two solos - each in practice for nearly 20 years with no prior disciplinary records, each cooperative and contrite with disciplinary authorities - are looking at vastly different punishments for variations on the same misconduct: failing to supervise non-lawyer employees.

By Charles Toutant

6 minute read

July 16, 2001 | Law.com

Three years after a survey of practitioners showed overt bias against women had been largely purged from the New Jersey court system, a state supreme court committee is searching for anecdotal evidence that it persists. In a questionnaire published in the New Jersey Law Journal, the Committee on Women in the Courts is asking lawyers to come forth with stories about different treatment of women.

By Charles Toutant

5 minute read

October 06, 2003 | New Jersey Law Journal

Suburban sprawl has its detractors, but there's at least one benefit to living on a subdivision of houses or condos that are all pretty much the same: You can join in a class action against the developer. That's what's happening in Burlington County, where -- thanks in part to the initiative of local lawyers -- disgruntled homeowners are banding together to sue builders over construction defects.

By Charles Toutant

7 minute read

January 27, 2010 | New Jersey Law Journal

A property owner's easement to get to the beach through a neighbor's yard may not be assigned to a third party, a New Jersey appeals court rules.

By Charles Toutant

5 minute read

November 16, 2010 | Law.com

In their eight years of operation, drug courts have saved millions of dollars, cut recidivism and transformed the lives of thousands of nonviolent offenders by helping them keep away from substance abuse, the Administrative Office of the Courts says in a new report.

By Charles Toutant

4 minute read

August 27, 2010 | Law.com

As New Jersey state aid and other sources of operating funds dry up, regional legal services offices -- which handle the bulk of noncriminal counseling for New Jersey's poor -- are in retrenchment, and several are handing out scores of pink slips, with more layoffs being predicted.

By Charles Toutant

5 minute read

February 28, 2006 | Law.com

A retiring New Jersey judge turned heads this month by issuing a ruling in a case in which the plaintiffs counsel is the firm he planned to join. Neither Gerald Escala nor his new employer, Herten, Burstein, Sheridan, Cevasco, Bottinelli, Litt & Harz, will say when the job offer was made. But Escala announced that he would join the firm just two days after signing a judgment in a case in which partner Thomas Herten was the plaintiffs lawyer.

By Charles Toutant

6 minute read